Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Newbie Questions

Jan-20-2010 08:47

(I've read this from the FAQ on the sticky, but I don't quite understand. Sorry for the repeated question.)

Occasionally my non-PE contact says something like:

1) X thinks X knows who the murderer is.
2) X hasn't heard or seen anything suspicious.

Does 1 mean X has WE, and 2 mean X has no WE?

Or discard both and just take it as my contact giving me the name of an additional suspect?

Jan-20-2010 18:07

(As Sherlock Holmes says, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”)

But you must make sure you ask EVERYONE! It could be that one of the people who might be guilty could be a WE giver himself, and therefore wouldn’t give himself away. Dead and clammed people also can’t give other people away. So if someone dies or clams on you who isn’t a know-nothing, and you only have one WE on a person, it’s best to just quit.

JZ, just because X hasn’t seen or heard anything suspicious, it does not mean that he is innocent. These things are mutually exclusive.

In conclusion, know-nothings are good-for-nothings. ;)

I hope I explained this well enough. If not, just PM me! :)

Riza’s Own Crazy Theory: **DISREGARD UNLESS YOU WANT TO TEST THIS** Very often, I find that know-nothings are most likely my guilty person, but not always. I also find that guilty people most often are the people who run away.

LOL S.S. :D

Jan-20-2010 20:46

Riza, there's actually some validity in your crazy theory if the following assumptions are true:
1. On any case, there are 3 pieces of WE. 2 of them match the guilty and 1 matches an innocent.
2. A guilty person can not have WE against themselves.

If those are true, then the guilty person only has a 1 out of n-2 chance of having witness evidence, where n is the number of suspects in the case. In a case with 5 suspects, that would mean a 1/3 chance of the guilty person having WE. With 11 suspects that would mean a 1/9 chance. More to the point, in a case of 5 suspects, the guilty person has a 2/3 chance of not having WE and in a case of 11 suspects that jumps up to 8/9.

However; a better conclusion than "know-nothings are most likely my guilty person, but not always" is that "People with WE are most likely (but not necessarily) innocent". In fact (still assuming my assumptions are true and my math is right), in a 5 suspect case a person with WE has a 8/9 chance of being innocent. In a 11 suspect case it would be a 26/27 chance.

Hopefully I made that clear enough so people can follow my logic.

Jan-20-2010 22:06

PS there are more than 3 pieces of WE on some cases :) if I was any good at dredging through the boards I'd find the post where someone sends in a screen shot of this.

Jan-21-2010 02:13

The other good thing about 'X thinks they know' is if you're down to the wire and wondering who to try and use Surveillance on.

Riza, I have a crazy theory of my own, which is that if someone has false WE and a fake alibi, then they're more likely to be guilty!

Jan-21-2010 07:38

Riza, I have no hard proof but I have tended to see the same thing as you. If a the person who runs away has a fake alibi, they're very often guilty. It also seems that if one of the fake alibis is mentioned by a townie (either as knows something or knows nothing), they're very often guilty as well. But all this may be wishful thinking and just a way to pick who to focus on.

My favorite way to guess who to check against PE is the suspect that I notice the least, because I have the worst luck and it's always the person I check last! Sadly, this technique usually works for me.

Jan-21-2010 15:27

I can assure you people who run away are not always guilty (having actually played cases recently for the first time in ages), and there can be a lot of WE spring up in an AI.

lol if you want a conspiracy theory, my personal one is that if I have remaining suspects to ask WE about, I always ask about the suspect who is the highest on the list, especially if it's the person on top of the list, then the next highest UNLESS the person on the very bottom of the list is available as a suspect, the I chose them.

lol. I also like to stroke my troll doll's hair backwards 43 times before I hit accuse.